CLAS Events > Spring Quarter 2007-08 Calendar

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Wednesday, April 2, 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Microfinance Working Group Discussion

With Rita Hamad from UC Berkeley and Christina Frank of Women's World Banking

Rita Hamad is a student in the UCSF - UC Berkeley Joint Medical Program and a graduate of the UCB Interdisciplinary MPH Program. She has spent the past year and a half working with a microcredit organization in Peru to evaluate the effects of its services on the health of clients and their families. The organization provides lending and health education services to the country's urban and rural poor. She has also conducted research on microcredit's effects on
mental health among clients of a South African organization. Rita will be speaking about her experience with the organization in Peru, as well as providing a broader critique on the use of microcredit as a poverty alleviation and public health tool.

Christina Frank is a Senior Associate in the Capital Markets Group at Women's World Banking (WWB) in New York. WWB is a global network of microfinance institutions (MFIs) and banks focused on improving access to financial services for low income women entrepreneurs in developing countries. The Capital Markets team assists network member MFIs to access debt & equity financing from local and international funders, assists MFIs in preparing for capital markets transactions, instructs MFIs on financial risk management and the implementation of risk management systems, and convenes MFIs with other industry players to discuss best practices. Prior to joining WWB in April of 2006, Christina spent four years as an Investment Banker in New York. She served as an Associate in the Media & Communications group at Jefferies & Company, where she executed variety of debt, equity and M&A transactions for small and mid-cap companies. Previously, Christina worked as a Senior Analyst in the Media & Communications group at SG Cowen & Co. and as an Analyst in the Latin American Investment Banking Group at Deutsche Bank. Christina is a board member of Princeton in Latin America (PiLA), a non-profit organization that provides year-long service work and non-profit sector fellowships in Latin America for Princeton undergraduates and alumni. Christina graduated with high honors from Princeton University with a major in History and a concentration in Latin American Studies.

Friday, April 4, 12:15 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Dr. IRAIDA CASIQUE

"El rol de los intelectuales en la Revolucion Bolivariana"

Talk in Spanish!

Sobre los discursos públicos de los funcionarios del gobierno chavista, incluido el propio presidente y el espacio concedido a la participación de “intelectuales” en la planificación y ejecución de las políticas de dicho proceso, se analizará el concepto y el valor concedido a la "intelectualidad" en el régimen político liderado por Hugo Chávez. La hipótesis apunta hacia una borradura del valor intelectual por el conflicto que generarían la libertad y la disidencia como condiciones para su desarrollo, en tanto el gobierno de Chávez promueve el compromiso político y la obediencia como principios rectores de cualquier participación en su proyecto. Said metaforiza al intelectual con un “francotirador”, un “espíritu de oposición” . Y Chomsky, señala como su función primordial, su “responsabilidad de hablar con la verdad y exponer las mentiras” . Ambos pensadores han sido citados por Chávez con admiración en relación a otros tópicos, pero sus pensamientos sobre el tema de la intelectualidad, podrían ser valiosos instrumentos para poner en evidencia contradicciones y amenazas importantes al ejercicio intelectual en el espacio que supone la Revolución Bolivariana."

Iraida Casique earned her B.A. in Letras from the Universidad Católica Andrés Bello (1984). She also has a Masters in Literatura Latinoamericana Contemporánea from the Universidad Simón Bolívar (1994), and a Ph.D in Spanish American Literature from Rutgers. At present, Iraida is an Associate Professor at the Departamento de Lengua y Literatura at the Universidad Simón Bolívar in Caracas, Venezuela teaching graduate and undergraduate courses on Latin American Literature. She is researching the the role of intellectuals in different Latin American Socialist Revolutions of the 20th Century, including the current “Revolución Bolivariana” in Venezuela.

Monday, April 7, 12:15 - 1:15 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

PEDRO FORTES , SPILS (Stanford Program in International Legal Studies) student in the Law School

“To Protect a Mockingbird: Analyzing Responses to Allegations of Police Abuse in Brazil"

'To protect a mockingbird' is an analysis of the responses of the Brazilian justice system to allegations of torture and police abuse made by criminal defendants in court. By observing that legal professionals have a high level of rights consciousness, the study disputes the common sense argument that there is a culture of widespread support for police violence in Brazil. The research suggests the alternative explanation that structural factors may be decisive for the poor responses of the system. Finally, it discusses reforms that may ultimately 'protect a mockingbird.'

Pedro Rubim Fortes, JSM candidate (2008), holds a LL.B. from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (1998), a B.A. from PUC-Rio (2003), and a LL.M. from Harvard University (2007). He has been a Professor of criminal law and constitutional law at Bennet Law School in Rio de Janeiro since 2003. He has also been a public prosecutor since 2000, with practical experience in criminal investigation, jury trials, and at the anti-drugs division. Having published academic articles in the field of criminal procedure, his current research agenda focuses mainly on the challenges of criminal law in unequal societies, like Brazil.

Tuesday, April 8, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

April 8, 12:15 PM

Dr. JAMES GREEN, Director of the Center of Latin American Studies at Brown University

“We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Dictatorship in the United States, 1964-85”

The presentation charts the development of a human rights discourse in the United States regarding torture in Latin America by analyzing the campaign carried out by clergy, exiles, academics, and activists in the late 1960s and early 1970s about the abuses of the Brazilian military dictatorship.

James N. Green is Associate Professor of Brazilian History and Culture, and Director of the Center of Latin American Studies at Brown University. He is currently completing a manuscript, "We Cannot Remain Silent: Opposition to the Brazilian Dictatorship in the United States, 1964-85" that will be published by Duke University Press.

Wednesday, April 9, 5:30 PM - 7:00 PM, Pigott Hall, Room 237

Latin American Literary Dialogs Working Group Discussion

9 de Abril, 5:30-7:00 pm, Pigott Hall, 237

Únanse a nosotros en una conversación
con Patricia Suárez
autora de la novela Perdida en el momento

Patricia Suárez nació en la ciudad de Rosario, Argentina, en 1969. Su obra literaria, por la que ha obtenido varias distinciones, abarca diversos géneros y ha sido difundida en la Argentina, España y Venezuela.

Perdida en el momento presenta la historia de Lena, un relato, disparatado y vertiginoso que forma parte de un moderno género en auge: la picaresca femenina. La originalidad y el desenfado de esta novela prometen un aire de cambio en la narrativa actual argentina. En 2003, Perdida en el momento recibió el premio de novela Clarín-Alfaguara.

This event has been sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and will be in held Spanish.

For more information, please contact: Francisca (fgflores@stanford.edu), or Angela (aweikel@stanford.edu)

Light refreshments will be served.

Thursday, April 10, 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Santiago and Madrid: Bing Overseas Study Information Session & Reception

Panel Presentation and Discussion

Lunch provided

Are you interested in traveling abroad and getting Stanford credit? Come learn about the Bing Overseas Study sites in Santiago, Chile and Madrid, Spain. Dr. Michael Predmore and Dr. Susan Cashion will talk about their teaching experiences in these Stanford programs. And, students who have participated in the Overseas program will share their perspectives.

Come learn what makes a good application!

Thursday, April 10, 4:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row) - CANCELLED!

CANCELLED! CANCELLED!

NEGUINHO DO SAMBA and VIVIAM DE JESUS QUIEROS perform and talk about their nonprofit work in Brazil

"Using the Power of Drums to Overcome Limitations of Race, Class, and Gender"

This talk will focus on the philosophy of Dida Music School which is to use music and their center to engage women and children from economically disadvantaged areas of Salvador in a supportive environment to overcome the struggles they face related to race, class and gender. Sue Anderson will be giving an introduction on the school and how it functions. Viviam will talk further on the political aspects of this type of school.

Neguinho do Samba and Víviam de Jesus Queirós are world-renowned Brazilian percussionists. Neguinho is the founder and cultural director of the Didá Educational and Cultural Association (also known as Projeto Didá) based in Salvador, Brazil, and Víviam is the education director.

Didá is a not-for-profit organization that offers free educational activities with a foundation in popular forms of art created and maintained by Africans and their descendants. Its primary objective is the education of women and children through the arts. In addition to its educational offerings, the organization also sponsors Banda Didá, an all-female Afro-reggae band that has performed with such Brazilian luminaries as Caetano Veloso, Gilberto Gil, and Daniela Mercury. Didá is a Yoruba word meaning "power of creation."

Sue Anderson received an MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. She has experience teaching at the SF Art Institute, UC Davis, Illinois State University, and Bentley High School. During the summer of 2004, she received a Fulbright Award to study in Salvador, Brazil, where she returned in 2008 under the auspices of the Artist Residency Award-Sacatar Institute. Her current research interests focus on teaching photography to the children of Salvador as a means by which to help overcome issues of race, class, and gender disparities.

Monday, April 14, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Graduate Lecture Series

LUIS PEREZ HURTADO, JSD student in the Law School

"The Expansion of Mexico's System of Legal Education"

Legal education in Mexico is expanding at an alarming rate. On the one hand, the number of Mexican law schools grew from 118 in 1991 to 930 in 2006. This means that every week during the past fifteen years, another university began to offer the basic law degree (Licenciatura en Derecho). On the other hand, there is a serious lack of professional opportunities for law graduates. What caused such growth? What are the characteristics of this phenomenon? Why do so many students continue to study law? This study is part of my dissertation and is based on multi-component field research that included observations, interviews, document analysis, as well as questionnaires administered to almost 22,000 law students in Mexico.

Luis Fernando Perez Hurtado is a JSD candidate at Stanford Law School. His research focuses on legal education. Luis is from Los Mochis, Mexico. He has received an LLB from Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, an LLM from Harvard Law School, and a JSM from Stanford Law School.

Tuesday, April 15, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

April 15, 12:15 PM

Dr. FAVIOLA RIVERA CASTRO, Stanford Humanities Fellow

"The Legacy of Liberalism in México"

According to a widely shared view in México today, the attempt to transform Mexican political institutions according to liberal values since the nineteenth century has been a complete failure. Against this view, I offer a different account of the legacy of liberalism that can make sense of the strong political opposition that it has provoked in the Catholic church. I criticize the philosophical assumptions behind what I call the "failure view" and argue for a different way of conceiving the relation between political ideas and political practice.

Faviola Rivera Castro is a full-time tenured Professor of Philosophy at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México. She received her Ph.D. in Philosophy from Harvard University in 1999. In 2003, she published a book entitled Virtud y Justicia en Kant. Her articles have focused on Kantian ethics and contemporary political philosophy in specialized journals of philosophy. She
is currently a Humanities and International Studies Scholar at the Humanities Center and the Freeman Spogli Institute at Stanford. Her recent research addresses the legacy of liberalism in México.

Monday, April 21, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Graduate Lecture Series

AUSTIN ZEIDERMAN, Ph.D. student in Anthropology

“Living Dangerously: Security, Risk, and Urban Governance in Bogotá”

Since the late 1990s, there has been a major shift in the politics of security and risk in Bogotá, Colombia. In this presentation, I describe this recent history by comparing two governmental initiatives that emerged at different moments during the past decade. The first is an urban renewal project in the infamous barrio of El Cartucho, which for decades symbolized insecurity, crime, and violence in downtown Bogotá until it was demolished and replaced by a city park in the early 2000s. The second is a governmental resettlement program designed to relocate residents in the urban peripheries who are living in what have been officially designated as “zones of high risk” (risk, in this case, refers to landslides, earthquakes, and floods). By focusing on the events that corresponded to the shift from a politics of security to a politics of risk, I outline two distinct models for governing the city. This will serve to demonstrate the contemporary problematic my dissertation research seeks to address. I then present a brief outline of my upcoming ethnographic study of security, risk, and urban governance in Bogotá, which will begin in the summer of 2008. I will discuss my research design (including research sites, questions, objectives, and methods) in hopes of soliciting feedback.

Austin Zeiderman is a PhD Candidate in Cultural and Social Anthropology at Stanford University whose work focuses an anthropological lens on the cultural and political dimensions of cities and urban space. He began exploring this topic in Baltimore, where he studied the history of environmental rehabilitation projects and urban redevelopment efforts. In Bogotá, he is conducting an ethnographic study of risk as an emergent technology of urban governance. Austin comes to Stanford from New Haven, Connecticut, where he completed a Master of Environmental Science degree at Yale University. He has previously worked on urban and environmental issues for non-governmental organizations and for the U.S. government. Austin grew up in Philadelphia and received a B.A. in Economics from Colgate University.

Tuesday, April 22, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series) - CANCELLED!

CANCELLED! CANCELLED!

April 22, 12:15 PM

Dr. GREG GRANDIN, Professor of History at New York University

"Empire's Workshop: Latin America and the Origins of Neoconservative Foreign Policy"

This talk will focus on how Latin America served as the venue that brought together for the first time the ideas and tactics that would later be fully realized in George W. Bush's post-9/11 foreign policy. In particular, it will focus on the importance of Ronald Reagan's Central American Policy, and the Iran-Contra scandal, in forging the alliance between neoconservatives, which give the Bush Doctrine its intellectual and legal legitimacy, and the religious right, which give the doctrine its grassroots power.

Greg Grandin received his Ph.D. from Yale in 1999. He is the author of a number of books, including The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (University of Chicago) and, most recently, Empire's Workshop: Latin America, The United States, and the Rise of the New Imperialism (Metropolitan). He has written for Harper's, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Boston Review, The New Statesman and the London Review of Books and is a professor of Latin American history at New York University. His research interests include the cold war and nationalism as they pertain to Latin America.

Thursday, April 24, 4:00 - 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Panel Discussion on Curanderismo in Northern Peru

4:00 - 4:30 PM: FILM

4:30 - 6:00 PM: PRESENTATIONS

6:00 - 7:00 PM: RECEPTION

Film: Collage of documentaries on the North Peruvian healing tradition
Eduardo the Healer (1970’s)
In Search of Ancient Mysteries (1990’s)
Chavín: The Tomb of Death (In Search of the Truth) (2000’s)

Talks: Dr. JOHN RICK, Associate Professor of Anthropology at Stanford, "Looking at Shamanism in the Past: Lessons from Chavín de Huantar, Peru"

Dr. DOUGLAS SHARON, Ex-Director of the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley, "North Peruvian Curers’ Altars in a Latin American Context"

Dr. LUIS MILLONES, Professor Emeritus in Anthropology at the Universidad de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru, "Where is Hell?: Current Beliefs of Northern Peruvian Shamans"

Dr. RAINER BUSSMANN, William L. Brown Curator of Economic Botany at the Missouri Botanical Garden, "Medicinal Magic: Tracking two thousand years of medicinal plant use in Northern Peru"

John W. Rick is Associate Professor and Chair of Anthropological Sciences at Stanford University, Curator of Anthropological Collections, and past Director of Stanford's Archaeology Center. His teaching concentrates on South American archaeology, the beginnings of social complexity, hunter-gatherers, stone tools, and digital methodologies in archaeology. For the last 13 years he has directed fieldwork at Chavín de Huántar, a monumental World Heritage site dating to around 1000 B.C. Cooperative mapping, excavation, and conservation work there is done under long-term agreements with the Peruvian government. His interests there concentrate on understanding how early religious cults strategised the beginnings of political authority in the Andes. A previous long-term project focused on early hunter-gatherer cave sites in the 14,000 ft altitude puna grasslands of Peru, but he has also done archaeological fieldwork throughout South America and the American Southwest; he is also currently co-directing a major fieldwork project on Preclassic sites near Lake Atitlan in the Guatemalan highlands. His publications include books and articles ranging across these subjects, as well as additional topics of interest.

His talk focuses on the formative (1500-500 BC) site of Chavín de Huantar in the north-central Peruvian Andes that has been widely recognized for its clear depiction of psychoactive plants and apparent associated shamanistic ritual activity. Because the site of Chavín spans a time of major socio-political transformation in Andean authority systems, any actual shamanism occurring at Chavín probably was similarly in a dynamic state. This presentation attempts to show the relationship between authority and shamanism in Chavín, at the same time exploring the potentially dynamic character of the shaman's role in evolving worlds of power.

Douglas Sharon is the Ex-Director of the Phoebe Apperson Hearst Museum of Anthropology at the University of California, Berkeley. Before this position, he served as the Executive Director of the San Diego Museum of Man for 21 years. Douglas earned his Ph.D. in Anthropology at UCLA, where he later worked as a research anthropologist in the Latin American Center. He has taught in the US and Peru: at UCLA, San Diego State University, California State University, the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, and the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo. He is currently a founding member of a Peruvian NGO called Remedios Naturales. Along with Dr. Rainer Bussmann, he also co-founded an ethnobotany field school in Peru with NIH funding.

His talk will consist of a survey of curers' altars, or mesas, throughout Mesoamerica and the Central Andes. In both regions, altars demonstrate syncretic blending of indigenous and Spanish traits. Moreover, mesas in these areas reflect indigenous cosmology.

Luis Millones received an MA in Anthropology and a PhD in History from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in 1965. He has been honored with the Peruvian Premio Nacional de Cultura (1967) and taught at the Universidad Nacional de Huamanga in Ayacucho, Peru. Currently, he is a Professor of Graduate Studies at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos in Lima. He is also a Fellow at the Hemispheric Institute at NYU, a member of the Academia de Historia de la Republica de Chile, and a member of the Seminario Interdisciplinario de Estudios Andinos in Lima.

His talk will examine the Andean experience of Catholic proselytization. For Andean society, it is difficulty to imagine a place of external punishment that separates members of a single family unit. The process of evangelization created hybridized supernatural universes that combined Catholic and Andean concepts. For example, Hell has been conceived of as a place for authority figures or for those who have abandoned ancestral rituals and gods.

Rainer Bussmann is head of the William L. Brown Center (WLBC) at Missouri Botanical Garden, and Curator of Economic Botany. Originally a vegetation ecologist, he focuses now on the interface between plant use, conservation and resource management. He held university appointments as Assistant Professor at University of Bayreuth (Germany), as Associate Professor and Scientific Director of Lyon Arboretum at University of Hawaii, and as Research Fellow at University of Texas, Austin, and has taught a wide variety of classes in the US, Germany, Africa and Latin America, using English, German, and Spanish as teaching languages.
His research interests focus on medicinal plants, neglected crops, wild crop relatives and traditional crop varieties, Seed and Germination Ecology, Natural Resource Management, International law in relation to Intellectual Property Rights, Ecology and Environment, Plant Ecology and Regeneration Ecology, with current projects in Peru, Ecuador, Iran, India, Nepal and Kenya.

His paper examines the traditional use of medicinal plants in Northern Peru and Southern Ecuador, with special focus on the development since the early colonial period. Northern Peru represents the center of the old Central Andean "Health Axis," stretching from Ecuador to Bolivia. The roots of traditional healing practices in this region go as far back as the Moche period (AC 100-800). Although about 50% of the plants in use at the colonial period have disappeared from the popular pharmacopoeia, the overall number of plant species used medicinally has increased in Northern Peru, while Southern Ecuador shows a decline of plant knowledge since colonial times.

Tuesday, April 29, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

April 29, 12:15 PM

Dr CARLOS COSTA RIBEIRO, CASBS Fellow

"Inequality of Educational Opportunity and Educational Expansion in Brazil"

Carlos Costa Ribeiro is currently a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study of the Behavioral Sciences and a Professor of Sociology at the Instituto Universitario de Pesquisas in Brazil. He received his Ph.D. in Sociology from Columbia University in 2002. His research interests focus on stratification and social mobility in Brazil.

Wednesday, April 30, 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row) - DINNER SERVED!

Microfinance Working Group PRESENTATION

LAURO GONZALEZ, Microfinance Management Institute of Brazil

Lauro Gonzalez, Ph.D., is professor of Finance and head of the Center for Microfinance Studies at Fundação Getulio Vargas, São Paulo–Brazil. His main research areas are Credit and Microcredit markets and International Financial Markets. In 2006, he was a Fellow of the Microfinance Management Institute (MFMI-www.themfmi.org). In 2004, Professor Gonzalez was a visiting scholar at the Center for Brazilian Studies at Columbia University in New York City, where he presented a paper entitled "The Mixed Blessing of Capital Flows" as part of the "Brown Bag Series."

The MFMI hosts a global resource center to assist those networks, universities and management consulting firms that assist MFIs with their capacity building. In doing so, MFMI aims to strengthen and promote the ability of existing MFIs to offer competitive services and options to their clientele.

For more information, please contact Jessica Richman (jessica.richman@gmail.com).

Monday, May 5, 9:30 - 12:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Workshop: "Re-imagining Latin American History as Iberian History"

May 5th, 9:30am to 12pm, Bolivar House

Red Columnaria has traditionally fostered interdisciplinary discussion on topics pertinent to the Iberian world. Recently, however, Columnaria has expressed an interest in incorporating Latin America into its ongoing analyses. This workshop will examine the advantages and disadvantages of intergrating Latin American history into Iberian history.

Participants
Gaetano Sabatini (Università Roma III)
Pedro Cardim (Universidade Nova, Lisbon)
José Javier Ruiz Ibáñez (Universidad de Murcia)
Tamar Herzog (Stanford)

Tuesday, May 6, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

May 6, 12:15 PM

Dr. LILA CAIMARI, Tinker Visiting Professor at Columbia University

"Crime and Society in Interwar Buenos Aires"

In recent years, a number of studies have established the role of the “crime question” in the context of the spectacular growth of Latin American cities in the late XIXth century. Building on a general agreement regarding the crucial role of scientific thought at a key moment of state development, studies on crime and punishment have produced a growing body of knowledge on prison reform, criminology, and social control.

This presentation shifts the attention to other historical dimensions of the Latin American “crime question”. It moves further into the XXth century, to focus on changes in consumption, illegal practices and the media. Based on the analysis of a string of robberies and kidnappings that triggered a wave of moral panic in 1920s and 1930s Buenos Aires, it argues that crime remained at the forefront of public opinion concerns, well beyond the urban revolution. Furthermore, it suggests that the Interwar period witnessed the decline of the influence of scientists as providers of commonsensical concepts to describe criminality. Perceptions of the “crime wave” were mainly shaped by the graphic languages and the “spectacular” logic of the new media, shifting the focus of attention from the body of the criminal to his public performance. The “crime wave” of the 1920s and 1930s led to the resurrection of the death penalty as a viable form of punishment. Finally, these arguments will be linked to the broader context of 1930s Argentine anti-liberalism.

Lila Caimari graduated as a History Professor from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (Argentina), and received her M.A. and Ph.D. at the Institut d’Etudes Politiques (University of Paris). She is currently Independent Researcher at CONICET (the main state-sponsored research institution in Argentina), and teaches in the Posgraduate Program in History at San Andrés University. Her research interests focus on two different areas. First, the intersection between religion and politics in XXth century Argentina. Her book, Perón y la Iglesia Católica. Religión, Estado y Sociedad (1943-1955) is the main outcome of this line of work. Second, the history of crime and punishment, a field of studies that includes a number of broader related topics on the social and cultural history of modern Argentina. Her book Apenas un delincuente. Crimen, castigo y cultura en la Argentina, 1880-1955 focuses on the prison experience and popular notions of justice and punishment. She has recently edited a collection of essays on social views of crime and justice: La ley de los profanos. Delito, justicia y cultura en Buenos Aires. Her current research project deals with illegal practices in Buenos Aires during the inter-war period. Prof. Caimari is also the editor of a reader of Latin American History for US students (Keen’s Latin American Civilization, in collaboration with Robert Buffington). She lives in Buenos Aires, where she regularly writes for cultural supplements and magazines.

Wednesday, May 7, 10:00 - 11:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Dr. CECILIA TAIANA

“Ontologies at War: The disappearance, incarceration and exile of psychologists/psychoanalysts during the last Argentinean dictatorship (1976-83)”

The turbulent decade of the 1970s in Argentina culminated in the bloody dictatorship installed by a military coup in 1976. This regime lasted until 1983 and was characterized by a growing intellectual polarization. Many intellectuals, among them practitioners and students of psychology/psychoanalysis, died or disappeared, others were forced into exile, and those who remained were subject to rigid censorship.

This investigation will provide an opportunity to contrast two discourses at play during this dictatorship period: the discourse of the military regime and psychological/psychoanalytical discourse as they pertain to the ontological notion of “man” in Argentina at the time, both of which are presented in spoken and written language and used to enact a specific given identity. An analysis of both ontologies will expose the antithetical counter-culture to the military regime embodied in psychological/psychoanalytical theory.

The proposed research therefore has two primary objectives: to study and document the disappearance, incarceration and exile of psychologists/psychoanalysts during the last dictatorship in Argentina and to produce a monograph that will bring together related aspects of a more general topic on psychological/psychoanalytical ideas and their role in the conflict between authoritarian and anti-authoritarian, and between theocratic and secular, worldviews.

Cecilia Taiana was trained in Buenos Aires, Paris, London and Ottawa. A region of central interest to Dr. Taiana is Latin America, and in particular, Argentina, a country marked by political trauma and dictatorships. In 1995, Dr. Taiana co-edited The Reordering of Culture: Latin America, the Caribbean and Canada in the Hood, an interdisciplinary book by sociologists, historians and cultural theorists that explores the vicissitudes of north–south cultural identities. In the area of trauma and memory, she is the author of Confession and its Twin, Torture: Re-thinking the Therapeutic Alliance, an article published in a refereed book published in 1995. More recently, she published an article in the History of Psychology (November 2005), entitled "Conceptual Resistance in the Disciplines of the Mind: The Buenos Aires-Leipzig Connection at the Turn of the Twentieth Century."

Based on her research on the transatlantic migration of psychoanalytical discourse, she contributed a chapter, Internationalizing the History of Psychology (Adrian Brock, Ed. 2006), entitled "Transatlantic Migration of the Disciplines of the Mind: An Examination of the Reception of Wundt's and Freud's Theories in Argentina" and an article "The Emergence of Freud's Theories in Argentina: Towards A Comparison with the US" to the Canadian Journal of Psychoanalysis (November 2006). Last winter, Cecilia wrote a biographical note on Jacques Lacan for the editors of the Dictionary of Medical Biography published by Greenwood Publishers in 2006. She will continue her work on Jacques Lacan during her next sabbatical (2007-2008), when she plans to document the role of Lacanian study groups in Argentina during the period of the last dictatorship (1976-83).

May 8-9, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Conference

Mini-course: Trauma and Memory: An Examination of Theoretical Debates and Treatments of Psychological Trauma.

Thursday, May 8, 4 PM - 8 PM

Friday, May 9, 10 AM - 4 PM

Led by Dr. CECILIA TAIANA, Professor of Psychology at Carleton University

PURPOSE: This seminar offers a comprehensive examination of contemporary theories of trauma and memory. It is designed to assist students’ learning of advanced psychological techniques of interventions with survivors of psychological trauma. Major emphasis will be placed in the critical examination of case studies to illustrate recent findings in neuroscience that intersect with the treatment of psychological trauma and its associated memory processes.

OBJECTIVES: This graduate seminar examines the intellectual foundations of contemporary theories of trauma and memory. A review of the genealogy of these concepts will familiarize students with the appropriate conceptual background for the introduction of recent findings in neuroscience.

The first half is devoted to the review of diverse theories of psychological trauma and different clinical approaches to treatment, among them cognitive/neuropsychological, attachment/developmental and Freudian/Lacanian. To understand the role of memory in the intrusive re-experiencing of the traumatic experience, the second half of the seminar focuses on clinical case studies, psychotherapeutic techniques and practical strategies of intervention. Current controversial issues in trauma research and research studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) will be examined and evaluated.

The objectives of the course are to provide you with the opportunity to:

(1) Understand the history of the concept of trauma and memory.

(2) Identify different theories/sets of explanations of psychological trauma and clinical approaches to treatment.

(3) Develop clinical skills, psychotherapeutic techniques and practical strategies of intervention.

(4) Critically examine and evaluate controversial issues in trauma research and research studies of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

At the completion of the seminar it is expected that the students will have developed skills in identifying the main symptoms presented by clients, basic psychotherapeutic techniques and practical strategies of intervention.

PREPARATORY WORK: We will start with a discussion on Friday 8th of May based on the following reading: A War of Nerves. Soldiers and Psychiatrists in the Twentieth Century. (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press, 2001). Chapter 6 and 27. Please a come prepared to discuss these chapters.

SCHEDULE FOR MAY 8, 2008

PART ONE: Genealogical examination of the concepts of trauma and memory.

Topic: Trauma and Memory: A Genealogy

PART TWO: Current theoretical debates

Topic: Current theoretical debates: A cognitive and developmental understanding of trauma.

Topic: Current theoretical debates: A Cognitive and Neuropsychological Perspective.

Topic: Current theoretical debates: A critical analysis of attachment theory.

SCHEDULE FOR MAY 9, 2008

Topic: Current theoretical debates (cont.): The status of psychoanalytical discourse.

Topic: Review of key theoretical debates and clinical implications.

Topic: Clinical practice: Current Counselling/Psychotherapeutic Approaches.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION: Please email slean@stanford.edu

TO RESERVE A SPOT: Please email slean@stanford.edu

Monday, May 12, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Graduate Lecture Series

CLAIRE ADIDA, Ph.D. student in Political Science, and DESHA GIROD, Ph. D. student in Political Science and 2007-08 CDDRL Fellow

"Do remittances improve governance? Remittance flows and public goods in Mexico,
1995-2000"

Scholars increasingly show that remittances improve development, but how do remittances, or direct money transfers from migrants, affect government responsiveness? Remittances may substitute essential governmental functions since they sometimes finance access to public goods and services. Mexico offers a unique opportunity to assess the competing impacts of government spending and remittances since Mexican states receive varying levels of remittance flows originating primarily from a single source, the United States. Using census data from Mexico's Municipal Database System and remittance data from its National Population Council, this paper offers a sub-national analysis of Mexican states' access to drainage and tap water between 1995 and 2000 controlling for political and economic variables. The data show that, when remittances improve access to public goods, government spending, at best, has no impact. Additionally, remittances' impact is strongest for the most private types of public goods, suggesting that remittances may indeed substitute government services.

Monday, May 12, 4:00 - 6:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Latin American Literary Dialogs Screening & Discussion

"El Zapato Chino"

Al final de la funcion, un dialogo con el director, Cristian Sanchez

El inicio está narrado por una niña, Marlene, que se encuentra un chofer de taxi en una especie de prostíbulo, y es como una niña de provincia que esta ahí, haciendo el aseo, y el
taxista se la lleva aguachada, como se dice. Se la lleva a su casa, y poco a poco empieza a surgir una pasión —entre los dos—, ella aparentemente como indiferente, inexpresiva, pero
ahí surge una cosa muy fuerte entre los dos, y él termina loco, en un viaje hacia la locura, metido en la maleta de su propio auto, porque en algunas escenas de la película se ve que él
está celoso que los clientes que sube al taxi puedan conquistar a la niña. Entonces la lleva en la maleta, y la saca cuando el vehículo va sin pasajeros, y todo termina en este viaje hacia no se sabe dónde...

Tuesday, May 13, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

May 13, 12:15 PM

Dr. ESTELLE TARICA, Associate Professor of Spanish and Portuguese, UC Berkeley

"Through the Looking Glass: Revolutionary Passages in Mestizo Bolivia, 1952"

This paper explores the phenomenologies of racism that have inspired nationalist thought in Bolivia. Historian Silvia Rivera writes that the overcoming of racial or ethnic stigma involves a passage “through the looking glass” of stigmatized self-recognition, a process that is necessary to rob the insult of wounding power. A simple refusal of the insult is not enough – it must be reclaimed in an affirmative vein. This paper will examine key texts by nationalist thinkers in Bolivia, including Carlos Montenegro, Jesús Lara, and René Zavaleta Mercado, as well as the oral histories of the revolution collected by José Gordillo, and explore how this double refusal – a refusal to refuse one’s identity, as it were – is characteristic of mestizo-nationalist revolutionary thought in Bolivia in the 1952 period.

Estelle Tarica is Associate Professor of Latin American Literature and Culture in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UC Berkeley, and Chair of the Latin American Studies Teaching Program. She received her Ph.D. in Comparative Literature from Cornell University in 2000. She has published numerous articles on race and nation in Latin America, particularly on the topics of indigenismo and mestizaje in Mexico and the Andes. Her book The Inner Life of Mestizo Nationalism is forthcoming this summer from the University of Minnesota Press.

Tuesday, May 13, 6:00 - 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Cooking Demonstration

Chefs Danielle Lostaunau and Gerry Slean will show participants how to prepare a quick and easy Peruvian meal. Danielle will demonstrate how to mix Peru's famous Pisco Sour, and Gerry will whip up papa a la huancaina (a typical cheese and potato dish). After learning about ingredients and cooking steps, participants will get to enjoy dinner.

Wednesday, May 14, 10:00 - 11:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Dr. SARA CASTRO-KLAREN

"Cuzco Evoked: Travel & Archeology in 19th-Century Peru"

This talk concentrates on a textual analysis of the archeologicial poetics of evocation, one of the chief narrative modes and rhetorical constructs in the representation of ruins. The focus is on Markham's CUZCO, published in London in 1856. It shows, among other things, that a lettered cultural memory supersedes Markham's eye-witness experience of the ruins and determines the narration he produces.

Sara Castro-Klaren is Professor of Latin American Culture and Literature at the Johns Hopkins University. She has been Director of the Latin American Studies Program there on two occasions. She has published extensively on the Latin American novel, postcolonial theory, and topics on Andean colonial and contemporary historiography with special reference to subaltern studies and imperial discourses. Her first book is El mundo mágico de José María Arguedas (Lima, 1973 and recently re-issued in France by Indigo Press, 2004). Her second book, a collection of essays on Julio Cortazar, Guaman Poma and Diamela Eltit, appeared in Mexico in 1989 under the title Escritura y transgresión en la literatura Latino Americana. Understanding Mario Vargas Llosa (University of South Carolina Press) followed in 1990. She is currently revising a number of essays on Andean historiography that will appear under the title The Narrow Passage of Our Nerves.

Wednesday, May 14, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Dr. PETER KLAREN

“Historicizing Peru's 'Time of Troubles'”

Peru suffered a cataclysmic upsurge of violence between 1980 and 2000, perhaps the most tumultuous period in its history: more than a decade of violence perpetuated by brutal terrorist movements and the military, principally in rural, Quechua-speaking areas of the high Andes, that resulted in large devastating migrations and some 70,000 dead and missing, and the disintegration of a fragile, often repressive democracy that ended in eight years of arbitrary and autocratic rule.

I invite listeners to undertake a necessary exercise in historicization—to take perspective on all that has just occurred and attempt to understand the recent past in light of the rest of Peru’s history. Peru has experienced major cycles of violence at 100-year intervals since colonial times—1780, 1880, and 1980—all mainly in the countryside and involving native peasants. Each grew out of a period of change, crisis and dislocation after an era of relative peace and stability. Taken together these three powerful, one hundred year socio-political explosions represent the extent to which the indigenous population has historically remained outside, marginalized and excluded from the narrowly based, Limacentric and Europeanized nation state established precariously at the moment of independence in the early 19th century.

For the history of modern Peru from the late 18th century to the beginning of the 21st century is the history of the failure of the country’s political and economic elites to construct a modern, integrated, democratic and developed nation. Seen from the opposite angle, it is also the tale of the inability of an alternative, more inclusive and truly national developmental project to impose its vision on the Peruvian state. Why this has been the case forms the fundamental backdrop to the rise and fall of the Shining Path and Peru’s “Time of Troubles” during the last decades of the twentieth century.

Peter Klaren received his B.A. in history from Dartmouth and his M.A. and Ph.D. in history from UCLA. He has taught at Washington State University, Dartmouth, Johns Hopkins (SAIS), and Georgetown University. At GW, he directed the Latin American Studies Program for six years and won the Trachtenberg Teaching Prize in 1995. He teaches courses on the history of Latin America, comparative revolutions in Latin America, and Latin American populism. Professor Klaren has published three books: Modernization, Dislocation and Aprismo (1973), which has appeared in two Spanish-language editions, and Promise of Development, Theories of Change in Latin America (1986) and most recently Peru: Society and Nationhood in the Andes (Oxford University Press, 2000). His most recent book was published in Spanish for distribution throughout Latin America: Nacion y Socedad en la Historia del Peru (Lima, Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 2004). During the 2007-08 academic year, he is serving as Visiting Professor of History at the University of California in Irvine.

Wednesday, May 14, 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Microfinance Working Group Discussion

Free dinner!

A Presentation by MICHELLE KREGER of KIVA

As the Microfinance Partnerships Manager for Latin America and the Caribbean, Michelle is responsible for driving Kiva's expansion and growth in the Americas, exploring new MFI relationships, working with existing Field Partners and building out Kiva's regional presence and team. She has multiple years of nonprofit experience, and before joining Kiva she managed the start-up and growth of the NatureKids Foundation, an education-focused nonprofit based in San Jose, Costa Rica. She has worked in communications at ACCION International, and has supervised and participated in community development projects in Honduras, the Dominican Republic and Costa Rica. Michelle holds a BA in International Relations with a minor in Economics from Boston University.

For more information, please contact Jessica Richman (jessica.richman@gmail.com).

May 14 - May 16, 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

Conference

Date: May 14-May 16

Time: 9:00 AM - 6:30 PM

Location: 05/14: KORET PAVILLON (565 MAYFIELD AVE);

05/15 Y 05/16: BOLIVAR HOUSE (582 ALVARADO ROW)

It began with La Conquista: cultural genocide. Today, the indigenous cultures of Latin America continue to disappear. But thanks to photography, film, and the Internet, these cultures have had the opportunity to stay alive and, to a degree, to renew themselves and find new ways of existing within a world that is rapidly changing.

"America Profunda: Olvido y Memoria a 24 Cuadros Por Segundo"

To what extent can cinema serve as an instrument to recover the memory and identity of a culture?
To what extent can cinema serve as an "image" for current indigenous and non-indigenous groups?
To what degree can cinema combat, delay, break the current uniformity of cultures and offer in exchange "cultural diversity" that is so necessary to understand one another?
To what extent can cinema, involving the indigenous subject, become the ONLY means of cultural restoration?

Join us for film screenings and roundtable discussions (mostly in Spanish) with the films' directors.

Schedule of Screenings:

MAY 14, 10:15: SYLVIO BACK: YNDIO DO BRASIL

MAY 14, 14:00: NICOLÁS ECHEVARRÍA: CABEZA DE VACA

MAY 15, 10:00: MARIANNE EYDE: COCA MAMA

MAY 15, 11:20: YANARA GUAYASAMIN: DE CUANDO LA MUERTE NOS VISITO

MAY 15, 14:00: CLAUDIA LLOSA: MADEINUSA

MAY 15, 16:00: JOEL PIZZINI: 500 ALMAS

MAY 16, 10:00: MARCOS LOAYZA: EL ESTADO DE LAS COSAS

MAY 16, 14:00: CRISTIÁN SÁNCHEZ: CAUTIVERIO FELIZ

For more information and for a detailed program, visit http://www.stanford.edu/dept/span-port/cgi-bin/

Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies, the Tinker Foundation, and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Thursday, May 15, 4:15 - 6:00 PM, Bldg 200, Room 307

Dr. JOAO BIEHL

“How Does a Human Being Disappear”

Drawing upon his award-winning research, including his 2005 work Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment, Professor Biehl will address issues of alienation, social death, and social dislocation. This event forms part of Project Absentia, the yearlong speaker series that examines disappearance and absence from an interdisciplinary, comparative perspective.

João Biehl was a National Institute of Mental Health Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard University (1998-2000); a member of the School of Social Science at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton (2002-03); and a visiting professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes, Paris (2004). His current research projects examine the widespread use of psychopharmaceuticals in poor urban households in Brazil, the distribution of and adherence to antiretroviral drug-treatments in resource-poor settings, and the influence of the environment and life histories on pathogenic gene expression. He is the author of Vita: Life in a Zone of Social Abandonment (University of California Press 2005). In progress are an edited volume on the anthropology of subjectivity and a book on the politics and ethics of the control of AIDS in Brazil (MacArthur and Wenner-Gren Research and Writing Grants). His work has been published in American Ethnologist; Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry; Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies; and Social Text. He teaches medical anthropology and courses on science, technology and society, economic globalization, state formations and citizenship, culture and mental health, social theory, and ethics. Professor Biehl holds the Harold Willis Dodds Presidential University Fellowship 2004-2007. He received the Presidential Distinguished Teaching Award in 2005.

Monday, May 19, 12:00 - 1:30 PM, Meyer 147

Mexican Working Groups Discussion

Presentation By

Dr. Gonzalo Hernández Licona,

Executive Secretary of the CONVEVAL, Mexican council for evaluating social policy

The Consejo Nacional de Evaluación was recently created with the responsibility of evaluating all federal social policy programs in Mexico. Most prominently it is the institute in charge of collecting data for the PROGRESA poverty alleviation program. Dr. Hernández will expose the role of the institute and the state of social policy evaluation in Mexico.

Lunch will be provided.

Monday, May 19, 12:15 - 1:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row) - CANCELLED

CANCELLED! CANCELLED! CANCELLED!

Graduate Lecture Series

FLAVIO PANIAGUA, Ph.D. student in Modern Thought and Literature

Tuesday, May 20, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

May 20, 12:15 PM

Dr. ANA MARIA GONZALES DE TOBIA, Tinker Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies

“Classics in Latin American Countries”

Ana María González de Tobia is a Professor of Greek Language and Literature at the National University of La Plata, Argentina. Her current research projects look at Greek grammar, Classical Studies in Latin America and Bacchylides in relation with early epics, ancient lyrics, tragedy and history. Her past research projects examined the poetics of loss and exile in Greek epics and tragedy as well as the epic and tragic space as a frontier of heroic ethics. She has been invited to lecture at UCL, UK; UFRJ, Brazil; Universidad Complutense and Universitat de Barcelona, Spain; Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela; Universidad Metropolitana de Ciencias de la Educación, Chile; Egean University, Turkey; and several universities in Argentina, among others. She has published about 30 papers in internationally-recognized journals of Classics. She was the editor of Una nueva visión de la cultura griega antigua en el fin del milenio (La Plata, 2000), Los Griegos: Otros y Nosotros (La Plata, 2001), Ética y Estética: De Grecia a la modernidad (La Plata, 2004), and Lenguaje, Discurso y Civilización: De Grecia a la modernidad (La Plata, 2007). She is currently Vice-President of the International Federation of the Societies of Classical Studies (FIEC); Director of the Centro de Estudios Clásicos, UNLP; Director of Synthesis, a journal of Classics. She is a Life Member of the Classical Association, the Hellenic Society, and the Asociación Argentina de Estudios Clásicos. At Stanford she will be teaching CLASSGEN 111: Croesus and Solon: Polemical Interpretation of Prosperity (Spring Quarter, 2007-08).

Wednesday, May 21, 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row) - DINNER SERVED!

Microfinance Working Group PRESENTATION

DEAN KARLAN, Yale Economics Professor

Dean Karlan is President of Innovations for Poverty Action (IPA), co-director of the Financial Access Initiative, a research fellow of the M.I.T. Jameel Poverty Action Lab, and co-Founder and President of StickK.com. His research focuses on microeconomic issues of financial decision-making, specifically employing experimental methodologies to examine what works, what does not, and why in interventions in microfinance and health. He has studied interest rate policy, credit evaluation and scoring policies, entrepreneurship training, group versus individual liability, savings product design, credit with education, and impact from increased access to credit. He has consulted for the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, FINCA International and the Guatemalan government. Karlan received a Ph.D. in Economics from M.I.T., an M.B.A. and an M.P.P. from the University of Chicago, and a B.A. in International Affairs from the University of Virginia.

For more information, please contact Jessica Richman (jessica.richman@gmail.com).

Thursday, May 22, 9:00 AM - 5:30 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Workshop

“The Challenge of Indigenous Peoples in the Democratic Agenda of Latin America Today”

Preeminent scholars and practitioners will gather for a workshop to review recent research and publications regarding the social inclusion of indigenous peoples in the context of democratic agendas throughout Latin America. The group will build upon the 2006 CAF publication "Los Pueblos Indígenas en la Agenda Democrática: Estudios de caso de Bolivia, Ecuador, México, y Perú" and work towards the generation of concrete policy recommendations. Workshop events include presentations by authors and participants as well as a high-level roundtable discussion. A limited number of student participants may be admitted. For more information about the workshop and attendance, please contact MaryKate Hanlon at mkh@stanford.edu.

Sponsored by the Corporacion Andina de Fomento and the Center for Latin American Studies

Thursday, May 22, 6:30 - 7:30 PM, TBD

Public Forum

“The Challenge of Democracy and Social Inclusion in Bolivia Today:

A Presidential Perspective with Carlos Mesa”

Former President Carlos Mesa will provide an insider's perspective on the current state of the indigenous movement in Bolivia as well as the challenges posed by social inclusion of indigenous peoples in contemporary Latin America. The lecture will be given in Spanish with English translation. Please contact MaryKate Hanlon at mkh@stanford.edu with questions.

Sponsored by the Corporacion Andina de Fomento and the Center for Latin American Studies

Tuesday, May 27, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

May 27, 12:15 PM

Dr. SILVIA E. GIORGULI, CASBS Fellow, on labor migration to the U.S. and Mexico’s policies on this issue

"The Incorporation of Mexicans into the U.S. Labor Market and the Management of International Migration"

The incorporation of migrants into the host society has been a persistent concern in the studies of international migration and its consequences for receiving contexts. Among the multiple dimensions of the incorporation process, one that has received most of the attention has been the socioeconomic integration of migrants, largely measured through how well they fare in the labor market.

A large number of studies on the socioeconomic participation of international migrants living in U.S. have stressed the marginalised participation of Mexicans in the labor market. When compared with other groups, Mexicans tend to be overrepresented in low-skill jobs, have lower salaries and less access to social benefits in the workplace. The lower educational attainment of Mexicans compared to other migrants and the large proportion of undocumented workers are considered as the main determinants for this poor performance. This fact has also led to serious questioning around the possibility of integrating a rapidly growing population from Mexico and their descendents into the American mainstream.

Based on 2006 data from the Current Population Survey and using multivariate analysis techniques, we suggest that the disadvantages that Mexicans face in the labor market are not totally explained by their human capital and documentation status. There are other factors that discriminate against the Mexican population and partially account for their vulnerable labor situation. In addition, the general conclusions around Mexican migrants overlook the heterogeneity in the stories and experiences that are linked to the greater diversity in the profile of Mexicans working in the U.S. in terms of sex, educational attainment, rural or urban origins, among others.

There is no reason to think that the forces that drive Mexico-U.S. migration will change in the short term. Within the current conditions, it is possible to expect that the trends towards the marginalization of Mexicans working in U.S. will continue. Following today’s discussion on the management of migration, we argue that the diversity in the labor incorporation patterns of Mexicans points to different policy needs targeted to respond to some of the negative consequences of migration for migrants and their families from the perspective of both, the receiving and the sending contexts.

Silvia E. Giorguli Saucedo is a demographer and a sociologist. She graduated with a Masters in Demography from El Colegio de Mexico and went on to earn a Ph.D. in Sociology from Brown University. After graduating from Brown, she accepted a position as Professor at the Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies at El Colegio de México. She is currently a Fellow at the Center for the Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Her research has focused on two main sets of issues. She has been working on Latin American and, more specifically, Mexican migration to the U.S. Through my work in this area, she has participated in the debate on the impact of migration on sending communities and countries and on the possible (although very constrained) political responses of these countries of origin in light of U.S. immigration policies. Her second main research line focuses on the study of youth in Mexico—now broadened to Latin America as a result of her participation in the Special Project on Comparative Perspectives on Adolescent Development in a Globalizing World. Within this research line she is especially interested in understanding the school-to-work transition and the link to family arrangements and institutional settings given the current transformations in Mexico and Latin America.

Tuesday, May 27, 2:30 - 3:30 PM, Cubberley 115, 1st floor seminar room

May 27, 2:30 PM

DR. ANNETTE SANTOS DEL REAL, Assistant General Director, National Institute for Evaluation of Education

"An Overview of the Progress in Assessment and Evaluation of Education in Mexico"

Dr. Santos del Real from of the National Institute for Evaluation of Education (NIEE) in Mexico will discuss the progress made in past decade in assessing educational progress in primary and secondary school. She will comment on the work of different institutes in Mexico in developing assessment tools and in creating information systems for educational indicators. In addition, she will analyze the challenges in evaluation and assessment in Mexico.

Tuesday, May 27, 3:50 - 4:50 PM, Cubberley 115, 1st floor seminar room

May 27, 3:50 PM

DR. ANNETTE SANTOS DEL REAL, Assistant General Director, National Institute for Evaluation of Education

Presentation on Education Databases

The second talk will focus on a detailed description of the databases available at the National Institute for Evaluation of Education. Dr. Santos del Real will suggest interesting topics for research using the databases. This session is particularly aimed to all those graduate students who eventually would like to conduct some statistical work using evaluation data from Mexico.

May 27 - May 29, 9:45 AM - 6:00 PM, Simposio

May 27, 28 and 29

El y Elle - Recordando a Mercedes Pinto / Retrospectiva Valeria Sarmiento

Locations:
May 27 & 28 - Koret Pavilion at the Ziff Center, 565 Mayfield Ave.
May 29 - Bolívar House, 582 Alvarado Row

Daily Times: 9:45 AM to 6:00 PM

The symposium aims to offer a transatlantic and transcontinental analysis of the woman's condition as seen through literature and film and to examine the function of both artistic manifestations as ideological and social vehicles/venues of expression. We will evaluate the literary works of Mercedes Pinto in light of the different existing screenplay adaptations of her work.

We aim to provide a critical retrospective of the cinematographic works of Valeria Sarmiento and to draw attention to the powerful connection between author Mercedes Pinto and filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento.

Guests:
Writer Roberto Brodsky (Georgetown University)
Professor Julianne Burton (UC, Santa Cruz)
Professor Alicia Llarena (Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canaria)
Paulo Antonio Paranaguá (Film critic)
Actor Gustavo Rojo (Mercedes Pinto's Son)
Filmmaker Valeria Sarmiento
Stanford Tinker Visiting Professor and Filmmaker Cristián Sánchez
Professor Patricia Torres San Martín (Universidad de Guadalajara, Mex.)

For more information, please visit: https://www.stanford.edu/dept/span-port/cgi-bin/?q=node/209

Roundtable discussions and lectures will be in Spanish

Sponsored by the Center for Latin American Studies and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese

Thursday, May 29, 5:00 PM - 8:00 PM, Bolivar House Garden (582 Alvarado Row)

SPRING FIESTA!

PARTY! FIESTA! FESTA!

Stanford's Center for Latin American Studies would like to continue its annual Spring Fiesta tradition by inviting all students, faculty, and staff with an interest in or connection to Latin America to eat, drink, and dance at the Bolivar House garden party on Thursday, May 29, 2008.

A live band, Terroritmo, will be playing salsa music from 5-8pm. Plus, there will be demonstrations by various Stanford groups. Jerk chicken and pork will be plentiful, but vegetarian options will also be provided. Alcoholic beverages will be available to those over 21, but non-alcoholic drinks will also be served. This Caribbean-themed event is open to the public. All are welcome!

Performances by:

Catch a Fyah

Cardinal Calypso

Ballet Folklorico

Anejos

And featuring the live music of salsa band, Terroritmo! Food provided by Back-a-Yard in Menlo Park.

Co-sponsored with the Caribbean Student Association

Monday, June 2, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Dr. JOSE LUIS LEZAMA

"The Social and Political Construction of Environment: Air Pollution in the Mexico Megacity"

José Luis Lezama earned his PhD in Social Sciences with a specialization in Environmental Policy at the Faculty of Environmental Studies, University College London in the UK. Dr. Lezama is currently the Director of the Center for Demographic, Urban and Environmental Studies (CEDUA) of El Colegio de México and Director of the Interdisciplinary Seminar on Environmental Studies at El Colegio de México. He was a Visiting Professor at MIT in the Department of Air, Atmospheric and Planetary Sciences, coordinating the Chapter on Environmental Policy and Institutional Analysis in the Mexico City Air Quality Project, under the coordination of the Nobel prize-winner, Dr. Mario Molina. He was a Visiting Researcher in the Faculty of Architecture at the Université Catholique de Louvain-La- Neuve, Belgium and a Visiting Researcher at Johns Hopkins University in the Department of Population Dynamics. Dr. Lezama is a columnist in the Mexican national newspaper, Reforma, writing on environmental, technological and social issues. He has recently been appointed as a member of the Advisory Board of the United Nations Program on Human Settlements UN Habitat and received an Honourable Mention for the Mexican National Ecological Award. Dr. Lezama is the author of several books, including : 1) Population, City and Environment in Contemporary Mexico; 2) Environment, Society and Government: The Institutional Question; 3) The Social and Political Construction of Environment (2004); and 4) The Environment Today: Crucial Issues in the Contemporary Debate (2003). Dr. Lezama is the author of more than 200 articles in books, journals and newspapers in Mexico and abroad on the environment, social theory and urban development.

Tuesday, June 3, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)
11:45 AM - 12:15 PM (Cafecito), 12:15 PM - 1:05 PM (Lecture Series)

June 3, 12:15 PM

CRISTIAN SANCHEZ, Tinker Visiting Professor in Latin American Studies, on Latin American film

Cristián Sánchez is a Professor of Film Theory and Director of Film in Chile. He graduated from the Catholic University in Santiago (1975). Most recently he has taught visual arts courses at Valparaíso University, the University of Chile, the Viña del Mar Film School, and Arcis University. He has written and directed 13 films, including Los Deseos Concebidos (1983). His films have won numerous awards. At Stanford, Dr. Sánchez will be teaching SPANLIT 249: Reading Cinema Today (Spring Quarter, 2007-08).

Monday, June 9, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Graduate Lecture Series

CAMILA DONATTI, Ph.D. student in Biology

"Seed dispersal attributes of plant species in a fruit-frugivore network and their consequences for spatial patterns in the Brazilian Pantanal"

Wednesday, June 11, 7:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row) - DINNER SERVED!

Microfinance Working Group PRESENTATION

GUY STUART, Public Policy Professor, Harvard University

Guy Stuart is a Lecturer in Public Policy. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1994 and then worked for four years in Chicago in the field of community economic development. During this time he served as the Director of the FaithCorp Fund, a nonprofit community loan fund. At the Kennedy School, he teaches courses on management and community financial institutions, which cover such topics as microfinance and credit unions. His book, Discriminating Risk, traces the historical origins of today's mortgage loan underwriting criteria in the United States and examines current underwriting practices. He is currently conducting research on racial and economic segregation in the United States and on microfinance and thrift cooperatives in India and Latin America.

For more information, please contact Jessica Richman (jessica.richman@gmail.com).

Thursday, June 12, 12:15 - 1:05 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Honors Thesis Presentations

Wine and snacks will be served after the presentations.

Journalism in Nicaragua
By AMI BONILLA

"Understanding the Vision: A Study of Post-Revolutionary Cuban Cinema"
By ANDREA GONZALEZ

Sunday, June 15, 1:00 - 3:00 PM, Bolivar House (582 Alvarado Row)

Graduation

Please join us in congratulating our Masters and undergraduate students on this very special day.